the sun hung from a string
by AshleyKay
Summary: One summer, five conversations. They leave for tour three weeks before school ends, the day is hot and she stands on the green field letting the sun shadow her face. wizards of waverly place/JONAS. nick/macy. macy/harper friendship.


**the sun hung from a string **

jonas/wizards of waverly place

_nick/macy  
macy/harper  
harper/justin_

_One summer, five conversations._

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A/N: Title and bolded headings all come from Owl City, If My Heart Was A House. Harper/Justin is a small barely unseen thing.

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**i._ back and forth_**

They leave for tour three weeks before school ends, the day is hot and she stands on the green field letting the sun shadow her face.

She isn't sad, not really. Not with how the sun is bright and the day seems for the moment, limitless.

But she isn't happy. She can feel the months sweeping under skin and she dreads that soon June will come and with it the nightmares of dying fathers and the way she sees her grandmother's fingers touching the roundness of her belly. She shivers despite the heat and beside her she can hear Van Dyke's deep voice calling the football team together for a last hurrah.

"Misa?"

The world is too bright when she reopens her eyes. "What?"

"You're not gonna be all, you know, girly about Stella and the Lucas brothers being gone, are you?"

She scoffs and settles her lips into a thin line. "I am not going to cry, if that's what you're worried about. Mighty Macy Misa doesn't cry."

"What about when you found out that you couldn't sing?"

"That wasn't crying, that was anger in the form of water."

"Really? 'Cause it kind of sounded like crying." He was smirking and she could feel the heat of her blood under the surface of her face.

"Sort of the sound you made when Stella dumped you for Joe?" She hates herself the minute the words shoot from her lips. Airy bullets that make Van Dyke's eyes shaded and closed and she's not this girl. She's not. But it's to close to June and to far from where she wants to be.

"I never pegged you to be such a bitch, Misa."

She shrugs and keeps her mouth pinned together.

"It's your dad isn't it." He isn't looking at her and she's staring at her shoes, clets with stains that look like clouds in the shapes of animals. "I remember him, greatest coach. I remember you then too."

She keeps as still as she can, like he'll stop talking and the world will pause so she can catch her breath.

Instead she can hear is mouth open and his silly intake of air.

"It's cool. That you're sort of a bitch at times. Who wants to know someone who's always peppy."

He waves over Darren and Randy and they play tag football till the sun waviers in the distance.

**ii. _i walk slowly when i'm on my own _**

May lingers in the air and she hates the smell of the approching month. Stella keeps calling and hovering silently around the topic of her father.

She takes to wandering to New York in her off time, getting lost in a sea of people who don't know, couldn't care that days from now, years ago, her father withered and died and her mother's eyes never shined the same and her grandmother's fingers lay still on her belly as if she could feel, like phantom limbs, her father's kicks.

"Sample?"

The girl is wearing watermelons like dimonds and Macy can't help but grin.

"It's a sub, with ham." She's nearly bouncing on her toes and her smile is so wide Macy's afraid her lips will split. But the other girl's eyes are overly watery.

"Sure." Suddenly she wants to pull the girl into a hug and tell her nothing is like this forever. Even if she's sure that it's a lie. "Macy."

The girls forhead knits together and Macy bites her lip. "I'm Macy."

"Harper."

"Are you okay?"

Harper nods and the tray in her hands shake, and her smile is still to wide and her eyes are still to wet.

"Me too." Macy says.

"My mom called me and she asked me not to go visit them." Harper's mouth forms an o. And Macy catches the tray before it crashes to the ground.

"My Dad died two days from now. Sometimes I still can't breath." She looks past Harper to the sign in the window.

"Harper..." An older man in an apron and a goofy smile is standing at the door. "Oh, do you like the subs that much? You don't have to take the whole tray, you can come on in and try Jerry's Special."

He plucks the tray from her hands and she ventures a glance at Harper, her eyes have lost the watery look and she can see cleary the trail of drying rivers on her cheeks.

"I haven't told anyone that yet." Harper's face is red in the cheeks and her words come out breathy and strange.

Macy shakes her head and rubs her hands along her skirt. The watermelons on Harper's dress look like grins and it makes Macy's stomach ache.

"I don't know why, but I hate talking about my Dad. He was nice and wonderful and I love him. Not like loved him, not like in the past or anything, but still and always and I want to be just like him. And I've never told anyone that."

She finds Harper's hand in hers and she feels suddenly like she's known this other girl her whole life. And when she glances at Harper's eyes she knows why.

"We can eat a sub and talk." She follows her inside and isn't afraid that this weird, that she can tell this stranger why her heart feels sore and used and why her eyes water when she dreams. The sandwich is fine and the day is still warm and Macy feels like she made a friend that won't be so much more than herself.

**iii._if my heart was compass, you'd be north _**

Nick calls her a day later, his voice scratchy and warm.

"I miss you."

"I know Stella told me you guys were trying to convice my Mom to let me at least come and visit."

"No. I mean, yes we're trying, but not that. I miss you. Me. I didn't know I would."

"Sorry?" She tries to keep the smile out of her voice.

"I sent you something."

"What?"

He tells her of Joe and Stella's fighting and Kevin's new animal dreams.

But he never tells her what he's sent her. They're talk is short and she can hear the sleep caught in his throat.

He falls asleep between telling her the colors of desert and how he keeps hearing the faint sound of a song he wants to sing in his sleep.

She doesn't hang up on him and through the soft sounds of his breath, she finds her own slumber.

When she wakes, the dream of her father as he was that last day lingering on her skin, he's still there. His breath still shallow and even.

She snaps thinks maybe she should snap the phone shut. Instead she whispers his name till she can hear his voice grumble and yawn.

"I think you're Dad's going to lose it when he gets the phone bill."

Nick's chuckle is low and rough with the body's dew of morning. "He'll think Kevin's called China again, he's really worried about panda's."

She laughs and then she remembers that it's June second. The day is to bright already and she can hear the soft dry sound of her mother moving around the house.

"Go outside Macy."

She wants to shake her head.

"Go on, May." She stills at the nickname. "Just go outside."

She slips by her mother, who's filling the kitchen with the the smell of her father's favorite foods.

Outside the sky is blue and wide and clouds are pulling into shapes above her.

"What do you see, Macy? I see a cow right above me."

She opens her mouth to giggle but it comes out a sob.

"May?"

"I see...I see flowers."

"Really?"

She nods and strains her head up.

Her cell phone is warm and almost dead against her face. "How did you know?"

"You told me, remember, we were doing that school thing about getting to know your peers. You said your dad always sat outside with you finding the shapes in the sky. You whispered that the day he died you were lying on his bed in your old house, the one with the sun room, and staring at the sky. He said something about trees in the sky and then when you looked back at him..."

She's cry and straining her neck to the sky. The sky was full of flowers and trees and the warmest summer breeze.

"Thank you." Is all she can manage to say.

**iv._ if the sun rose up from the west _**

Her and Harper are standing on the waters edge. The busy sounds of a summer blurring around them.

"Justin was mad."

Macy keeps her hands in her pockets and grins sideways. Harper's wearing apples today and she smells like water and fear. "Well you did leave him hanging for Stan." She keeps the sound of humor from covering up his name.

"Justin's never minded before. In fact, most of the time he finds new and intresting ways to avoid me. I cancel one silent movie trip with him and he wouldn't talk to me. He asked his dad to pass him the broccli."

"That's weird?"

"He hates broccli. He says it's like eating a tree." She shakes her head and the apple on her sleeve looks as alive as a heart.

"You've been spending a lot of time with him lately."

The water rushes to their ankles and beside them a family laughs and splashes and Harper's eyes fold in.

"He's freaking out, I think, you know, college and stuff."

She slips her fingers around Harper's. The apple heart is pulsing into her arm. "Did you ever tell them?"

"No. I should. I really mean to, Mr. and Mrs. Russo keep asking about when I'm going to go down."

She pulls her deeper into the waves. "Keeping looking ahead and the water cresting." The water rushes past their knees and when the first waves subside and the rush falls back to the sea climbing to their thighs. And in front he second wave comes in, it feels suddenly like their speeding backwards and the water is chasing after them.

Macy's never felt more moved.

"Thanks for taking a sample." Harper whispers.

"Your parents are stupid."

When Macy glances away from the breaking water, Harper's eyes look alive and free and she's glad she took that sample too.

For now, the sun sitting high in the sky and summer filling up the ocean, she's happy. Even if her Dad's still gone and her Mom's still sad. The clouds are shaped like hope and Harper's face is beaming beside her.

**v. _our fingers entwine  
_**  
They come home three days before school starts, August is unnaturally cold and she can smell Autumn in the air.

She sees Nick first, waiting at the thrift store.

He grins and she doesn't think twice before wrapping her arms around him.

"I've missed you."

"Me too."

His fingers linger at her hips and she smiles as big as she can.

It's strange, the way it is, with their faces so close and the way it's all come together. Even without talking about it.

"Yesterday, I saw flowers in they sky." His hand finds her face and he looks as if maybe he'll kiss her.

She grins. "I think that means my Dad approves of you."

"Good. Because I was hoping to you know, not miss you anymore."

"I hope I don't have to miss you either." She traces the line of his lips when he kiss her. It's a sentence or a novel of all she's seen this summer, all in a moment.

She thinks he understand when he leans his forehead to hers. It's not love. Not yet. But her heart's warmed with all the glorious possblity.


End file.
